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Russian Soyuz rocket installed on Kourou spaceport’s launch pad to orbit OneWeb satellites

The launch of the carrier rocket is scheduled for February 10

MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. A Soyuz-ST-B carrier rocket was delivered to the launch pad of the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana to orbit the next batch of British OneWeb communications satellites, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos announced on Friday.

"A Soyuz-ST-B rocket, which is to launch the next batch of 34 OneWeb spacecraft into orbit, was taken to the launch pad at the Guiana Space Center (French Guiana). On Monday, February 7, 2022, the first launch day schedule works began," Roscosmos said on its website.

The pre-launch preparations at the Guiana Space Center include separate transportation of the rocket (an assembly of three stages) and the spacehead unit and their subsequent assembly on a launcher, using a mobile service tower, it said.

"The launch of a Soyuz-ST-B carrier rocket is scheduled for February 10, 2022, at 21:09:37 Moscow time," Roscosmos specified.

CEO of the commercial launch operator Glavkosmos (part of Roscosmos) Dmitry Loskutov earlier told TASS that seven launches of British OneWeb communications satellites were scheduled for 2022. The first launch was scheduled to take place from the Guiana space center (the Kourou cosmodrome) in February, he specified.

British OneWeb low-orbit satellites are designed to create a space-based communications system to provide high-speed Internet access in any locality worldwide. Currently, the OneWeb orbital cluster comprises 394 satellites. All of them were orbited by Russian Soyuz carrier rockets.